He has written more than thirty books on education, including the acclaimed 36 Children, The Open Classroom, The Discipline of Hope: Learning from a Lifetime of Teaching, Growing Minds: On Becoming a Teacher, 'I Won't Learn from You': And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment, and Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Children's Literature and the Power of Stories. He has also written A Grain of Poetry: How to Read Contemporary Poems and Make Them a Part of Your Life and Making Theater: Developing Plays With Young People. In addition, he has co-edited A Call to Character: A Family Treasury, in response to William Bennett's book, The Children's Book of Virtues.

Mr.Herb Kohl received a Bachelor's degree in philosophy from Harvard; a Master's degree in special education from Teacher's College, Columbia; and was a Henry Fellow at Oxford in philosophy. Formerly on the staff of the Center for Urban Education and director of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative at the Horace Mann-Lincoln Institute of School Experimentation, he taught for several years in Harlem schools, and was director of an experimental program in the Berkeley schools, called "Other Ways." He was program director for the Fund for New York City Public Education from 1992 to 1996. In Addition, Mr. Kohl has taught at Carleton College; Hamline University; the College of Rural and Human Studies in Alaska; the University of California, Berkeley; Point Arena High School, and grades kindergarten through four at Acorn School in Point Arena, California. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and the National Book Award in Children's Literature (with Judith Kohl).